Does your private practice know how to use social media—the RIGHT way?

Every private practice owner knows that social media is a gold mine when it comes to marketing. Ignoring the potential of social media for your private practice growth is almost a recipe for certain failure these days.

Unfortunately, some private practice owners have found out the hard way that social media as a marketing tool needs to be handled appropriately so that it will be effective rather than disastrous.

Social media disasters happen for a lot of reasons. But many social media mistakes can be boiled down into just a few common elements.

Here are our top 4 tips for a social media strategy that works.

Put a policy in place. Before you post a single thing on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or any social media site, make decisions about appropriate social media use and put them in writing. Then decide which staff will be participating and train them accordingly.

Vet your content. Think carefully about which kinds of articles or memes you’ll share with your followers, and which ones are better left alone. Never share any article you haven’t read based on a headline, which can be misleading. Make half your content original material produced from your office, and the other half information that your patients need and want.

Get out there every day. What makes social media so effective is engagement on a regular basis. You’ll lose your audience very quickly if you’re not able to keep up with the norms for a particular social media site.

Have fun with it. One thing patients don’t want to see is boring, didactic, serious content from you day after day. Keep an eye out for things that are relevant but fun—ideally, something that shows the professional but relaxed milieu of your office environment.

Remember that every single post on social media represents your private practice.

Having trouble with marketing issues like this? It’s one of the things we address in our program 12 Secrets of Private Practice Mastery.